Basic fluency in 12/8

Right, so it looks like we'll be doing a lot with this triplet feel this week— mainly getting comfy improvising within this 12/8-style blues, soul or pop groove. Think Lopsy Lu, Higher Ground, Isn't She Lovely, or shuffles like Back At The Chicken Shack or Inside Out. There's a 4 feel, with a strong quarter note pulse (dotted quarter, if we're actually in 12/8), and fairly even emphasis on all notes of the triplet. A deceptively difficult style at the faster tempos, and not very forgiving of lapsing into a duple feel, as many of us are apt to do— I get the feeling a lot of drummers come away from playing it feeling slightly burned. Maybe it's just me.

So there's no confusion about meter: in jazz parlance 12/8 is a meter, but it's also a feel. These exercises are all written as 8th note triplets in 4/4, which is basically exactly equivalent to 12/8— there are twelve 8th notes per measure in 12/8, and with these triplets we're also playing twelve 8th notes per measure in 4/4. They're both counted in 4, they both have a three-note “triplet” subdivision. This isn't the time to go into detail about it; just play the triplets and don't be thrown when I refer to it as a 12/8 feel.

I've put together an easy little set of methods, using Progressive Steps to Syncopation by Ted Reed. Pp. 6-7 and 10-11. We'll be playing the book rhythms with the triplet grid filled out in a way that should be very familiar, and adding several stock cymbal rhythms. For example, using the rhythm from page 6, line 7:

First way: Play the top line* on the bass drum, and fill out the triplet grid with your left hand on the snare drum:

* - 99% of what we do with this book is based on interpreting the top line, and ignoring the bottom line, even on the two pages where the bottom line is the same as the top. Let's move on.


Second way: Play the top line on the snare, and fill out the triplet grid on the bass drum. Except here, when there are multiple runs of bass drum notes, we'll put in a rest on the beat. So you're only ever playing the last two notes of the triplet on the bass drum— “John Bonham-style”, as it's known on the internet:

Also use the exercises from pp. 10-11. To get the practice rhythm, swing the 8th notes and fill in the middle note of the triplet. Quarter notes are handled the same as before. In the examples we'll use the line 5 rhythm:

First way: Bass drum-lead, fill in triplets on snare drum with left hand:

Second way: Snare drum-lead, fill in triplets with bass drum:

Keep reading— the actual practice routine is after the break:

Page o' coordination: “Afro Blues” bell - 02

Another page of coordination patterns for this Afro/shuffle cymbal pattern, which I'll go ahead and call “Afro Blues” because I feel like it. It came up in my own playing, and I'm not aware of it being used as a set part in African or Latin music, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was, either. I'm not using it as a set, repeating thing, either; the purpose of these pages is more to develop some freedom within a shuffle feel, and to be able to move freely between the shuffle rhythm and the “quarter note triplet” rhythm on the cymbal, while doing other things.

So here's entry 2 in this series, which is considerably more challenging than the first, developing some linear patterns between the snare and bass drum, along with our bell pattern:

As a warm up, you could try playing either the shuffle cymbal rhythm or the “quarter note triplet” cymbal rhythm for the entire measure— which could be difficult to do without having it actually written out. Maybe I'll be nice and write it up for you. Since stylistically we're in a Blues/Shuffle feel, I tend to stay on the snare drum and not to do our usual (for the POCs) left hand moves so much. No reason not to do them, though.

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Page o' coordination: Afro shuffle bell pattern

This is something that came up in playing Back At The Chicken Shack, a shuffle by organist Jimmy Smith . We play a pretty open interpretation of the style on that tune, not a strict Blue Note shuffle, and I found myself playing this cymbal rhythm repetitively quite a bit. It's quite similar to the Afro 6 bell patterns we've been working with extensively over the last couple of years:

Here's the same rhythm written as 8th notes in 12/8:

I've written up a page of left hand independence patterns based on that, with a couple of standard bass drum and hihat rhythms. “Afro shuffle” is not a real style or type of groove that I am aware of; the name just sounded good because of the similarity to that Afro 6. We could've called it “Afro Blues.” Just know the name is made up, and no one else is going to know it or use it.

You could do our standard left hand moves (do you have them memorized yet?) with this page, but I don't feel it's strictly necessary; my goal is to get a more open texture within a standard shuffle feel. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to practice beats 1-2 and 3-4 of each exercise separately— looping those two beats for each pattern before doing the whole measure.

Get the pdf